Alleged teen hitman charged with murder in Mexico

CUERNAVACA, Mexico  A San Diego-born boy accused of working as a hitman for a drug cartel in central Mexico was formally charged on Wednesday in the killings of four men whose headless bodies were found in August dangling from a highway bridge, prosecutors announced.

Edgar Lugo Jimenez, nicknamed "El Ponchis," had been wanted since October. He was arrested at an airport in central Morelos state as he tried to board a plane to Tijuana.— Marco Antionio Diaz Sierra

Edgar Lugo Jimenez, nicknamed "El Ponchis," had been wanted since October. He was arrested at an airport in central Morelos state as he tried to board a plane to Tijuana.
/ Marco Antionio Diaz Sierra

Edgar Jimenez Lugo, 14, will be tried in juvenile court for homicide, participation in organized crime, drug possession and carrying a firearm reserved for the exclusive use of Mexico’s armed forces.

The thin, curly haired boy and a 19-year-old sister were arrested Dec. 2 as they prepared to board a flight from Cuernavaca to Tijuana and eventually reach their mother’s home in San Diego. A second sister was arrested after driving them to the airport.

As a 14-year-old, Edgar faces a maximum sentence of three years in juvenile detention, where he would receive psychological counseling and resume an education that ended in the second grade, juvenile court Judge Armando Prieto said.

Last fall, Mexico’s army began searching for a boy assassin nicknamed “El Ponchis” who appeared in Internet videos of gun-waving youths and scenes of torture. Thrust before reporters and cameras after his arrest, Edgar confessed to beheading four people while high on marijuana and being threatened with harm if he refused. It is unclear whether that confession will be admissible in court.

Edgar’s father, David Antonio Jimenez Solis, cast doubt on the charges against his son, saying the public confession with soldiers at his side was made virtually at gunpoint.

“They grabbed him in a rush to judgment,” said Jimenez Solis on Wednesday from Tejalpa, a working-class neighborhood where Edgar spent most of his youth. “It’s more likely he has nothing to do with this.”

Jimenez Solis, who works at a chicken processing business, said he has not been in direct contact with his son or his public defense attorney since the arrest. But he believes his son is incapable of the crimes in question.

“The soldiers put a gun to his head,” he said.

The organized crime charge against the boy stems from a kidnapping for ransom. The homicide victims, ranging in age from 20 to 24, are believed to have been targeted in a fierce drug-gang turf war in the central Mexican tourist destination of Cuernavaca.

Prosecutors will seek 3.5 million pesos, or nearly $300,000, in reparations for the kidnapping victim and relatives of the homicide victims, said Efrain Vega Giles, a spokesman for the Morelos state attorney general’s office.

Edgar’s arrest in December was a shocking example of how juveniles are increasingly being used by Mexico’s drug-trafficking gangs. Mexican authorities say more than 15,000 people were killed last year in the country’s surging drug-related violence.

Troops in Cuernavaca continue to search for members of the South Pacific Cartel and its local enforcer, Jesus Radilla Hernandez, whose alias is “El Negro.” Radilla, believed to be in his mid-30s, does not appear among major drug traffickers on the Mexican attorney general’s most wanted list of crime suspects.

The Mexican army has accused Radilla of recruiting young gang members, including Edgar, to wage a gruesome battle for control of the Cuernavaca area after the December 2009 killing of drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva.